Folds of Waves
by Bibicat
Summary: Continuation of the Windchime. Mysteries concerning Tanyuu's mushi begin to unfold. ashino and Io mount a rescue of unwilling villagers afflicted with heavy metal poisoning.


p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"Chapter 1/p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima; min-height: 17.0px;" /p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;""Once upon a time a princess lived deep inside a forest. She was always there, for she was a living statue carved from a magical tree. All of her but her right leg was whittled out of the tree. She was known as the Writing Princess for she was a great minstrel and scribe of stories./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"Many visited her to seek her wisdom. In return she would ask for their tales. Each word whittled away at her leg, freeing it little by ever so little./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"It caused her great pain, but she bore it, for she longed for the day she would be finally free. That day she would take her first step and go forth into the world./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"One day a jester came seeking her. In return he told her his tales. His were of different sorts, for he spoke of many things while others spoke only of war./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"He would often tell her of tragedies and humorous happenings as well as those that warmed her heart. In time she grew fond of the jester. The jester, she thought, returned her love, too./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"On a certain day she could bear the pain from whittling no more and longed for rest. She found herself longing for the company of the jester. He did not come that day, of course, for there was no way for her to send for him. He was a traveling jester, with no particular place to call home, no particular destination. Still, she longed for his company for the relief from her painful labor he brought./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"The jester always wore a mask and very odd clothes. At first she thought nothing of it; he was a jester after all. It is his occupation. Still, she wondered what lay beneath the mask. What feature did the face bear, that spoke with such gentleness and purity of heart?/p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"When she asked him to reveal his face he would only answer "no, Majesty. My face would only frighten thee."/p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"Month after month she waited for his return. He visited one night. When he finished telling her his stories he inquired of her melancholy./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;""Majesty, thou art displeased with my tales?"/p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"She cradled her shoulders and shook her head./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;""I am not."/p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"He took off his own garment and gently draped it over her. He asked her again./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;""Why is thy heart heavy tonight? I had hoped the light of thy smile would light my way"/p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"Her shoulders shook and she broke out in tears./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;""My heart grows ever so lonely in thy absence. Take an axe and cut me free, for I long to walk with thee."/p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"Quite taken by her words the jester remained silent for a long while. Then he finally spoke./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;""Majesty, cutting thee free would certainly spell thy doom. No, this cannot be."/p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"The princess implored him. He embraced her in his arms. She returned his embrace. Then he spoke once again./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;""Majesty, thou must not dream of such folly. Instead, I shall visit thee twice as often if you so desire. Three time if you wish."/p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"She replied/p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;""I wish for thee to stay with me, then."/p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"The jester again fell silent. After a long pondering he confessed./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;""I cannot stay with thee, for I am a harbinger of ill fate. With my presence surely many a tragedy would follow. No, I cannot stay lest/p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"a great calamity befall thee."/p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"With those words the jester released the princess and bid her farewell. His words broke her heart, for she believed her love unrequited./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"However the jester began to visit more often, and she learned she was mistaken. It was a long time before they spoke of it again./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"He visited on a night bright with moonlight. His words whittled away at the wood that held her captive, and lo, it became but a sliver./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"He spoke/p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;""Majesty, thou knowest my heart."/p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"She nodded. He removed his mask./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;""This is my face. Behold, I am a demon. I came to bid thee farewell, for I return whence I come tonight. Majesty shall soon be free. I wish thee happiness."/p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"He beheld her face cupped in his hands. She wrapped hers around his. His countenance was as princely and beautiful as she always imagined. Then his image began to fade into the moonlight./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"Alarmed, she forced her foot free from the wood with all her might. It broke away but grudgingly and bled. The jester was startled but vanished completely that moment./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"The princess wept and wept. Her tears tricked down her arms and soaked into the soil. It caused the soil to capture her with roots and tendrils once again. The entirety of her form turned wooden, nevermore to be released./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"The End"/p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima; min-height: 17.0px;" /p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"It was as if the last brush stroke released something. Her grief that had been bottled up until that moment began to flow. Before that moment they stubbornly refused to come, however hard she tried. She put her head down upon the writing desk over her folded arms. Her tears ran for awhile, but eventually stopped as her consciousness faded. The last of it dropped on the part of the paper where she marked the end, causing its ink to bleed out. /p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"It had been nearly a month since Kamakura was hit by a tsunami. Once seat of the central government, now it lay a putrid bowl of salty dirt and rotting carcases. The residents who heeded the warning given by a local posse survived it while others were taken by the raging water and lost. The young woman, the writer of this short tale was among the survivors, though recovered on beach. How she and others washed ashore was not a part of their memories. One moment they were at sea about to drown, and next they came to on a sandy beach. /p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"She, Tanyuu, was found the day after the tsunami, along with another young woman. Those who found them remarked later how tightly Tanyuu's hand gripped Umeno's wrist. Even in unconsciousness Tanyuu's grip would not loosen. It was only after they both came to that she let go. Umeno collapsed into Tanyuu's arms and burst into tears. The preceding events came rushing back into Tanyuu's mind. It was instinct that drove her to embrace Umeno to comfort her. In a short order Umeno's sisters came running, along with Shin-san, the town's tofu vendor. They were all overcome with emotions, which they could not even name at the time. They huddled, embracing and crying, simply thankful for each other's survival. By and by a crowd gathered around them. Tanyuu looked around. Similar scenes were repeating all along the shore, around fellow survivors who washed up. Her eyes looked for her beloved. She was certain he had managed to survive. /p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"This night something made her remember a short fairytale she wrote sometime ago. The paper she originally wrote on was destroyed, but she could recall most of it, give or take a phrase here, a word there./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima; min-height: 17.0px;" /p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"The princess minstrel was her own shadow. The jester...the beloved...was lost now, and she a prisoner of grief. As soon as the realization came tears. /p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima; min-height: 17.0px;" /p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"In the last month nearly three quarters of surviving Kamakura residents scattered gradually. Some to find new homes somewhere else, some to relatives for temporary shelter. Only the very determined remained. Among them were those who truly could not imagine anywhere else to live, as well as the town's many priests. As for herself, she knew she should have left. Several weeks into a new pregnancy, it would have been prudent to leave. But something gripped her heart. A part of her was hanging onto the slim hope her beloved had survived. Until this night./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"Something stirred her heart that night. Mindful not to wake the roomful of women sleeping in the great hall of the temple where her fellow evacuees gathered for temporary shelter, she crawled out. She was one of a handful of people among them who could read and write, which put her in a record-keeping tasks during this period of recovery. The temple's shed was being used as storage for now, for many a things that washed up on the shore along with the survivors and the deceased. Her beloved always carried a wooden box. She spotted it at one point upon the beach. It must have washed up with the tide. To her amazement, it was intact, though its contents were not. /p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"His name was Ginko. Most of the contents of his box were ruined, but he must have taken care to treat the wood with some kind of substance to seal out moisture. She had opened it several days earlier to inspect it. In it she found a moldy lump of what used to be papers. Among them was a letter she wrote herself at his behest. Ginko was a rare human who attracted the earth's mysterious ethereal beings known as emmushi/em. Her memories of the day he asked her to write that letter replayed in her mind as she hobbled by the box on her cane. When he spoke of his apprehension an ominous foreboding arose in her heart. No, he was not afraid of his death. He lived every day next to it, where he was accustomed. His fear was for disasters his rotting corpse might bring where it lay. Hence he implored her to see to it that his corpse be cremated. He asked her because all news concerning emmushi/em eventually reached her. She remembered writing it only grudgingly. Now it was a mere lump of fiber. /p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"Evening breeze passed through the temple and its shed. From distance she heard a clear ringing of a glass wind chime. The sound entered only a small corner of her mind. In it she recalled being surprised to find it still unbroken. It was discovered near where grandfather's second house had stood until recently. The slim chance that it would be unbroken and found was nothing but astronomical. span style="font: 14.0px Hiragino Kaku Gothic ProN;"font face="Nimbus Mono L, monospace"span lang="zh-CN"「不思議な事もあるもんですのう」/span/font/span"well, funny things do happen," quipped the head monk of the temple upon hearing about it. span style="font: 14.0px Hiragino Kaku Gothic ProN;"font face="Nimbus Mono L, monospace"span lang="zh-CN"「さもなければ神懸かりの代物ですかの」/span/font/span"or it carries some sort of power imparted by a strong spirit" he added. Tanyuu had never held any kind of faith, but she wanted to believe it was so. For, the same force may be upon her beloved. Somehow. /p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"At a request by some, Tanyuu hung the wind chime in a corner at the temple, so it may impart whatever the benefit it could. Tanyuu smiled and obliged graciously./p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"With the candle in her hand she lit the other one within a small emandon /em(interior lighting lantern used in that era). Once she began the words returned to her. When she reached the point where the original story ended it was as if the words wrote themselves through her. It was that moment she had to admit he was most likely dead at sea. There was no report of emmushi/em infesting one spot, because they were on mass move westward. In fact, mushi was only a small part of what was changing. Everything about the land was changing. Tanyuu could only assume it was but the beginning of a much larger impending disaster. She folded her arms on the writing table. Only for a moment, just for a moment, she wanted to grieve. /p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;"As her consciousness drifted, a dark idea entered her mind. It was still her duty to seal the one mushi within her. In time she would return to her permanent residence to resume it. No doubt of that. But then it will be different. It will be the lonely life she had always known, but she was different now. So, what if she could somehow bring it all to an end? What if she ingested kouki, life blood of the earth in its purest form, in sufficient quantity to gain upper hand over the one within her? Would it kill her? Likely. Would it turn her into a mushi herself? Most likely. What would happen then? She did not know. /p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima;""No" she could almost hear her beloved scolding her. The coldness with which it rang in her mind gave her a shiver. Of all people, she did not want to deserve his disapproval, dead or not. That was only a foolish idea. However it took root in her heart, whether she knew it or not. /p  
p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima; min-height: 17.0px;" /p 


End file.
